Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

NP-completeness: A retrospective

  • Invited Papers
  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Book cover Automata, Languages and Programming (ICALP 1997)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 1256))

Included in the following conference series:

Abstract

For a quarter of a century now, NP-completeness has been computer science's favorite paradigm, fad, punching bag, buzzword, alibi, and intellectual export. This paper is a fragmentary commentary on its origins, its nature, its impact, and on the attributes that have made it so pervasive and contagious.

Partially supported by the National Science Foundation.

A version of this talk was given at a meeting in the Fall of 1995 celebrating the 60th birthday of Richard M. Karp, to whom this paper is also affectionately dedicated.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. S. Arora, C. Lund, R. Motwani, M. Sudan, and M. Szegedy, “Proof verification and hardness of approximation problems.” Proc. 33rd FOCS (1992) pp. 14–23.

    Google Scholar 

  2. S. A. Cook “The complexity of theorem-proving procedures,” Proc. 3rd STOC, (1971), pp. 151–158.

    Google Scholar 

  3. W. Diffie and M. E. Hellman “New directions in cryptography,” IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, 22, pp. 644–654, 1976.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. R. G. Downey and M. R. Fellows “Fixed-parameter tractability and completeness I: Basic results,” SIAM Journal on Computing, 24, 4, pp. 873–921, 1995.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. T. Eiter, G. Gottlob “Identifying the minimal transversals of a hypergraph and related problems” SIAM Journal on Computing, 24, 6, pp. 1278–1304, 1995.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. M. Fredman and L. Khachiyan “On the complexity of dualization of monotone disjunctive normal forms” Journal of Algorithms, 21, 3, pp. 618–628, 1996.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. P. Honeyman, R. E. Ladner, M. Yannakakis, “Testing the universal instance assumption,” Information Processing Letters, 12, pp. 14–19, 1980.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. D. S. Johnson, C. H. Papadimitriou, M. Yannakakis “How Easy is Local Search?” J.CSS, 1988 (special issue for the 1985 FOCS Conference).

    Google Scholar 

  9. D. S. Johnson, C. H. Papadimitriou, M. Yannakakis “On Generating All Maximal Independent Sets”, Information Processing Letters 1988.

    Google Scholar 

  10. R. M. Karp “Reducibility among combinatorial problems,” pp. 85–103 in Complexity of Computer Computations, R. E. Miller and J. W. Thatcher (eds), 1972.

    Google Scholar 

  11. D. E. Knuth “A terminological proposal,” SIGACT News, 6, 1, pp. 12–18, 1974.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. R. E. Ladner “On the structure of polynomial time reducibility,” J.ACM, 22, pp. 155–171, 1975.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. L. Levin “Universal sorting problems,” Pr. Inf. Transm., 9, pi 265–266, 1973.

    Google Scholar 

  14. C. H. Papadimitriou “On the Complexity of the Parity Argument and other Inefficient Proofs of Existence” JCSS, 48, 3, 498–532, 1994.

    Google Scholar 

  15. C. H. Papadimitriou “Database metatheory: asking the big queries,” Proc. 1995 PODS Conf., reprinted in SIGACT News, spring 1996.

    Google Scholar 

  16. C. H. Papadimitriou “The complexity of knowledge representation,” Proc. 1996 Computational Complexity Symposium.

    Google Scholar 

  17. C. H. Papadimitriou, M. Yannakakis “Optimization, approximation, and complexity classes” Proc. 1988 STOC, and J.CSS 1991.

    Google Scholar 

  18. C. H. Papadimitriou, M. Yannakakis “On limited nondeterminism and the complexity of the Vapnic-Chervonenkis dimension,” special issue of J.CSS 1996 (special issue for the 1993 Structures Conf.).

    Google Scholar 

  19. R. L. Rivest “Cryptography,” pp. 717–755 in Handbook of Theoretical Computer Science, J. van Leeuwen (ed), The MIT Press/Elsevier, 1990.

    Google Scholar 

  20. S. Sahni, T. Gonzalez “P-complete approximation problems,” J.ACM, 23, pp. 555–565, 1976.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. T. J. Schaeffer “The complexity of satisfiability problems,” Proc. 10th STOC, (1978), pp. 216–226.

    Google Scholar 

  22. M. Yannakakis “Node-and edge-deletion problems,” Proc. 10th STOC, (1978), pp. 253–264.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of California, Berkeley, USA

    Christos H. Papadimitriou

Authors
  1. Christos H. Papadimitriou
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Pierpaolo Degano Roberto Gorrieri Alberto Marchetti-Spaccamela

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 1997 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper

Papadimitriou, C.H. (1997). NP-completeness: A retrospective. In: Degano, P., Gorrieri, R., Marchetti-Spaccamela, A. (eds) Automata, Languages and Programming. ICALP 1997. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1256. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-63165-8_160

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-63165-8_160

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-63165-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-69194-5

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation